LOCAL MARATHONER STILL DEALING WITH ‘WHAT IFS’

Point Loma’s Corey Hanrahan was hoping to run the Boston Marathon in 3 hours and 30 minutes. The plan afterward was to wait by the finish line while various members of his charity team came down the home stretch.

But Hanrahan wasn’t feeling his mightiest last Monday, and ended up a good five miles from the finish when the bombs went off.

His wife and 10-month old daughter, meanwhile, were 60 feet from the blast.

It’s not often that your heart rate shoots up after having just run 21 miles, but Hanrahan’s blood was pumping as rapidly as ever. Was his family OK? Did they make it out of the melee? Would he ever again see what he feels are the world’s two most beautiful faces?

Fortunately, the answers to those questions are yes, yes and yes. But that didn’t prevent the marathoner’s mind from racing long after his legs stopped.

“It’s just all the what ifs. What if they were closer? What if the bomb had been more powerful?” said Hanrahan, adding that he had trouble sleeping those first few days after the marathon. “There are a lot of other things that could have taken place, things that would have been a lot worse to my family or my teammates and their families.”

Hanrahan’s wife, Dana, didn’t want to talk about her experience, and who can blame her? After witnessing two explosions and protecting an infant amid chaos, she waited hours to reunite with her husband as cellphone service vanished throughout Boston.

For Corey, the only way back was to complete the course and then figure out his family’s whereabouts in a city on high alert. Fortunately, in Beantown Monday, the good guys outnumbered the bad about 625,000 to 2.

First off, the man Hanrahan was running beside was Dick Hoyt, who inspired Corey to take on 26.2 mile races in the first place. For 31 years, Hoyt has been pushing his disabled son, Rick, in the Boston Marathon, and his story so touched Hanrahan that he joined his charity team, “Team Hoyt.”

Secondly, as Hanrahan trudged toward the finish line, a stranger (or “angel,” as Corey described him) offered him a ride back to his hotel.

And after an hourlong drive that covered no more than a couple of miles, Corey walked into the Sheraton, where he saw his wife and daughter waiting in the lobby. Tough to say what lasted longer, the marathon or the hugs.

“Tears,” Hanrahan said. “Just tears of joy because of what happened.”

This year’s Boston Marathon will surely go down as the most emotional of Corey’s life, but for the rest of us, next year’s will likely stand atop the all-time podium. We will see more runners on the course, more spectators than on the streets, and more viewers than ever watching from their homes.

Hanrahan, like so many of his peers, already has plans on returning. Fall down and get right back on the course, right?

“They picked the wrong people when they went after marathoners, because we persevere more than anyone,” said Hanrahan, who has now run three Boston Marathons. “I feel bad for the race director, because there are going to more people than ever.”